The flyer for one half of E.M.U. Theatre’s upcoming double bill merits a double take.

A wigged she-beast stares defiantly at onlookers through an ambiguous animal mask, her arm raised monkey-like over her head.

“Shift,” a one-woman musical in mask by Amy Jo McCarville, it announces. But what’s it all about?

“It’s like a pastiche of different characters, not really a traditional narrative,” says McCarville, a Kansas University and E.M.U. alumna visiting from Portland, Ore. “I play nine different characters. Each appears in a different mask.

“It’s funny and it’s weird, with quirky movements, and I suppose people can expect to be surprised by the permeable nature of identity. Who we are is different from moment to moment.”

Pair that with “Love and War,” a satirical, domestic comedy, and the result is a diverse evening of theatrical fare. The one-act plays will be performed back to back at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H.

“Love and War” marks the third script E.M.U. has produced by Lawrence playwright Joel Reavis, but it will be his directing debut with the company.

The action unfolds in a mountainside home while a war rages in the valley below. Jessica (Claven Snow) wants to marry a soldier fighting in the valley, and the opportunity arises when soldiers seek refuge at the cabin she lives in with her father, Richard (David Chipman).

The rub? Jessica is repulsive and lacks both patience and grace.

Love

“I wanted to take this fairy tale-type story where you think of the most beautiful woman in the country who’s being pursued by a man and invert that idea to a hideously ugly woman who wants to marry a man,” says Reavis, who studied playwriting at KU.

Soldiers are played by Andy Stowers, Kevin Siess and Jeff Sorrels.

“It’s hilarious,” Reavis says of the play. “There’s no heavy moral values or anything. It’s supposed to be entertainment, for laughs.”

McCarville expects a few laughs, too, among other responses. She was inspired to write her masked, one-woman show, in part, because of her training at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, Calif.

“One of the main focuses of that program is to help you develop your own voice and generate your own material,” she says. “The material was generated after working in the mask, improvising and taking what was inherent in the mask and fleshing characters out of that and finding out what they would say.”

McCarville created all the masks herself using papier-mâche and acrylic paint. Her performance will be accompanied by a soundtrack engineered by friend James Durawa.

“Love and War” and “Shift” will be E.M.U.’s 21st full production. The troupe’s next project will be a 10-minute play festival in August.